


i am the cause to all your problems

by Hermia



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 07:12:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermia/pseuds/Hermia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six years later, Kali hauls in a girl fighting tooth and nail despite a broken wrist held at an awkward angle, and the sight of her stops him cold.</p><p>He shouldn't recognize her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am the cause to all your problems

The girl hiccups instead of crying.

She lost everything, and she stands rather than sits. She curls her hands into fists around the fabric of her shirt rather than wiping at her eyes. She doesn't say anything, just takes uneven little gasps of air while the rest of the pack discusses what to do with her.

There's no reason to be polite about it. Even if they talked in hushed tones in another room, she would still hear them loud and clear. So they volley options back and forth within earshot, eying her occasionally, and she stands with her hands curled into fists and her jaw squared and twitching.

She's small, even for her age, and lost under the vaulted ceiling, her sneakers caked in barely dry mud. Her face is round, her cheeks red, and her eyes are bright beneath the threat of tears. Everyone knew which family she belonged to; they could see Talia in her defiance, all that Hale pride in the way she refused to let anyone touch her. Because if they touched her, they would know she's trembling.

His wife found her, and though the rest of the pack seems torn on whether or not to keep her around, it's Ennis who ends the discussion with a rumble of, “She's staying.”

–

He doesn't have children.

He doesn't _want_ children –

– so the house is empty of anyone close to her age. There aren't any video games, no comic books. When she does find books, they're paperbacks that don't interest her. Most of the pack members have jobs that take them away from the three brownstones that sit side by side at the edge of the city she doesn't know.

Cora spends her days outside. She knows her feet took her far away from Beacon Hills before she found another pack, but she doesn't know where she is _exactly_. No one thought to tell her, and she doesn't want to ask.

There's a park across from the line of apartments. She runs and climbs trees and dominates the jungle gym, always carefully applying her abilities so she doesn't draw too much attention from the other kids. Her mother taught her control. Her father taught her to always keep herself in check. Her uncle taught her how to have fun on her own.

Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, Cora barely manages to swallow back a whimper when she hears grass crunching underfoot behind her. She turns so quickly the swing's chains pull her back around before she catches more than a glimpse of him – the alpha of the pack that took her in.

 _Ennis_ , she reminds herself once the swing stops swishing back and forth, the toes of her shoes digging into the sand.

“It's getting late. You should come inside.”

There's no demand. No gentle urging. No fatherly bark shouted out of the front door. His voice is full, but full of what, Cora doesn't know. Just full. It's not nice or kind, but it's not cruel, either. She knows what both sound like.

She doesn't turn around; he does, already heading back in the direction of the house by the time she looks up from her own feet.

–

Ennis's wife teaches Cora what she can.

While she's not an actual teacher, Anna at least knows what she's talking about, and she fills in blanks without any trouble while everyone else is absent. They spend more time together than Cora does with anyone else, split between reading the two shelves of new books together and getting flour out from beneath the girl's bitten-blunt nails.

So when Cora runs away barely four months later, it's not Ennis who misses her, but Anna. It's Anna who shelves the books she doesn't need in alphabetical order and cooks alone and wishes the little girl would come back to fill the empty place she's left.

By the end of the year, the pain stops.

Ennis sees to that.

–

Six years later, Kali hauls in a girl fighting tooth and nail despite a broken wrist held at an awkward angle, and the sight of her stops him cold.

He shouldn't recognize her.

Her scent is different. Her hair is longer and streaked with reds and blondes. She's filled out, muscular and soft at the same time. And when she opens her mouth, he can tell she's not that quiet little girl anymore. She spits out a curse at Kali as they both move past, too focused on the claws digging between the bones in her forearm to notice him.

“Be _quiet_ ,” Kali says, her voice more of a growl than a purr, something he was wholly unused to hearing. Their shoes scuffle on the floor, and when the alpha tosses Cora into the open vault, she breathes a sigh of relief.

Cora gets back up onto her feet only a moment after being thrown to the ground. She's bleeding and furious, but her eyes catch his over Kali's shoulder. That stops her from hurtling forward. That stops her from running. That stops her from doing anything but staring.

The vault door swings shut before either of them can say a word.

–

It doesn't take long for Cora to realize what Ennis being there with the alpha pack meant.

Even though she never particularly liked Anna, she still misses her.

–

“You know her.”

Kali's words unfurl between them, and Ennis says nothing. The truth lies wrapped in that silence, tugging a smile at her lips when he refuses to answer. She sits cross-legged in front of him, her feet pressing against the arms of the chair and her hands resting on her knees. “I didn't know you knew the Hales.”

“I didn't.”

An eyebrow shifts higher on her forehead. “But you know _her_. Interesting.”

His eyes snap to hers. “It isn't.”

“It is.”

Kali smiles wider, and Ennis forces himself out of the door.

–

_I can't believe you killed them,_ Cora wants to say, but that isn't the truth. She doesn't know the first thing about Ennis. She doesn't know what he's capable of. She doesn't know if he even wanted his pack to begin with. All she remembers is a playground and heavy boots in grass and the voice that filled her up and told her she was staying.

She remembers him smelling like sweat and faded soap and hard cinnamon candies he'd crack between his teeth with a clench of his wide jaw. He doesn't eat them anymore, but she swears she can still smell them when he gets close enough.

“You haven't changed,” is what she says.

When he replies with a surly, “You haven't, either,” Cora's fingers curl into fists at her sides.

–

Cora kisses him first.

She pulls back immediately only to find his hands in her hair, yanking her back until their mouths smash against each other. Lips part, and his tongue is hot when he forces it past her teeth.

Her hands aren't fists then, but reaching and searching and gaining purchase on his shoulders, finally gripping, finally pulling herself even closer. She's clumsy in a way even he can't make up for, though she finds her footing quickly, taking fistfuls of his shirt and tugging on him in mirrored desperation.

He doesn't know this is her first kiss.

He doesn't want to ask.

–

Aiden's blow connects with her jaw, making her head snap back and her mouth swim with blood. The taste of iron joins cinnamon candy, and her vision blurs for only a moment before all she can see is light outlining his body and the glowing red of his eyes.

“If he wants to play with you, he should keep his door locked.” When he grabs her face, his claws sink into her cheeks. “Or do it in the vault.”

Anger and frustration scream inside of her. _I shouldn't have gotten caught. I should've been faster._

_I shouldn't have tried._

_I should've stayed in his bed._

Cora's vision blurs again as he grips her tighter, but only for a moment, only until he hears the steady, heavy thump of Ennis's strides moving in his direction. He lets go, not wanting to confront the much larger alpha on his own, and she manages to kick him – hard – in the shin before he slinks off in the direction of his and his brother's room. Not even limping.

She swallows back the blood in her mouth, hoping to regain some composure before Ennis emerges from the connecting hallway, but at the last moment, she wets her lips, smearing them with red.

–

( _Instead of ignoring her,_

_instead of raising a fist,_

_instead of punishing her,_

_he gives her a reason to not leave_.)

–

When the time comes, she does anyway.

–

Deucalion doesn't need him in Derek Hale's apartment; Kali could handle both Derek and Cora on an off day. He wants him to be there. He wants him to see Cora.

He wants to remind him where she stands, like he doesn't already know.

Like she didn't tell him a thousand times.

Because cutting out a memory is easier and less painful than Deucalion wants for him. He wants the truth to dig itself in under Ennis's skin and linger until the wound festers so he's only that much stronger when he kills her and her brother.

Deuclaion thinks confronting her will be his cure.

He's not wrong.

–

She fights him.

Of course she does.

Cora fought him every step of the way for different reasons.

So when she runs at him, he scoops her up and lays her down hard enough that the floor boards crack beneath her shoulder blades. The air leaves her lungs, and the lights in her eyes go out until she manages to take a deep, ragged breath.

The look that fills them up after is one of betrayal.

Ironic.

–

When Ennis cuts her out, he doesn't bleed.

He doesn't do anything.

–

Derek kills him in the bank's blue moonlight.

The fight left them all exhausted, and Derek can barely lift himself up off of his knees, out of the quickly spreading pool of blood. It soaks into his jeans, darkening them to black, and she can't take her eyes off of the massive heap of muscle and bone in front of him.

Cora takes a sharp breath, loud in the sudden silence that surrounds them, and her diaphragm aches.

But she doesn't cry.


End file.
